In this, as in some other forms of asceticism, we must look to Buddhism for the model on which the Church fashioned her institutions. Ages before the time of Sakyamuni, the life of the anchorite had become a favorite mode of securing the _moksha_, or supreme good of absorption in Brahma. Buddhism, in throwing open the way of salvation to all mankind, popularized this, and thus multiplied enormously the crowd of mendicants, who lived upon the charity of the faithful and who abandoned all the cares and duties of life in the hope of advancing a step in the scale of being and of ultimately obtaining the highest bliss of admission to Nirvana. In the hopeless confusion of Hindu chronology, it is impossible to define dates with exactness, but we know that at a very early period these Bhikshus and Bhikshunis, or mendicants of either sex, were organized in monasteries (Viharas or Sangharamas) erected by the piety of the faithful, and were subjected to definite rules, prominent among which were those of poverty and chastity, which subsequently became the foundation of all the Western orders. Probably the oldest existing scripture of Buddhism is the Pratimoksha, or collection of rules for observance by the bhikshus, which tradition, not without probability, ascribes to Sakyamuni himself. In this, infraction of chastity falls under the first of the four Parajika rules; it is classed, with murder, among the most serious offences entailing excommunication and expulsion without forgiveness. The solicitation of a woman comes within the scope of the thirteen Sanghadisesa rules, entailing penance and probation, after which the offender may be absolved by an assembly of not less than twenty bhikshus. Other punishments are allotted for every suspicious act, and the utmost care is shown in the regulations laid down for the minutest details of social intercourse between the sexes.[185]